Metagenomic Exploration of Plastic Degrading Microbes for Biotechnological Application

Abstract

: Since the last few decades, the promiscuous and uncontrolled use of plastics leads to the accumulation of millions of tons of plastic waste in the terrestrial and marine environment and elevated the risk of environmental pollution and climate change. The concern arises more due to the reckless and unscientific disposal of plastics containing high molecular weight polymers, viz., polystyrene, polyamide, polyvinylchloride, polypropylene, polyurethane, and polyethylene, etc. which are very difficult to degrade. Thus, the focus is now paid to search for efficient, eco-friendly, low-cost waste management technology. Of them, degradation of non-degradable synthetic polymer using diverse microbial agents, viz., bacteria, fungi, and other extremophiles become an emerging option. So far, very few microbial agents and their secreted enzymes have been identified and characterized for plastic degradation, but with low efficiency. It might be due to the predominance of uncultured microbial species; consequently remain unexplored from the respective plastic degrading milieu. To overcome this problem, metagenomic analysis of microbial population engaged in the plastic biodegradation is advisable to decipher the microbial community structure and to predict their biodegradation potential in situ. Advancements in sequencing technologies and bioinformatics analysis allow the rapid metagenome screening that helps in the identification of total microbial community and also opens up the scope for mining genes or enzymes (hydrolases, laccase, etc.) engaged in polymer degradation. Further, the extraction of the core microbial population and their adaptation, fitness, and survivability can also be deciphered through comparative metagenomic study. It will help to engineer the microbial community and their metabolic activity to speed up the degradation process.

<em> </em>Current Research on Microbe-Plastic Interactions in the Marine Environment

“…(i) use multi-OMIC and interdisciplinary approaches to understand the role of the plastisphere in plastic biodegradation as well as in determining the mechanisms and pathways used for biodegradation 19,151,157,161,164,170,172,175,178,180,181,183,184,188,189,191,194,196,[198][199][200][204][205][206][207] ;…”

Progressing Plastics Circularity: A Review of Mechano-Biocatalytic Approaches for Waste Plastic (Re)valorization

“…Only recently pretreated post-consumer PET was successfully depolymerized into terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol at industrially relevant scale (16.7 g/L/h of terephthalate) using engineered PET depolymerize ( Tournier et al, 2020 ). The quest for new microorganisms and enzymes is still very much alive and is twofold via traditional isolations and using multi-omics approaches ( Jyotika et al, 2020 ). Penicillium raperi , Aspergillus flavus , Penicillium glaucoroseum and Pseudomonas sp.…”

Extremophiles in Soil Communities of Former Copper Mining Sites of the East Harz Region (Germany) Reflected by Re-Analyzed 16S rRNA Data

“…The sample material (No. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] is not any kind of typical natural soil, but surface material from the mine dumps, was brought from the ground to the surface during the site-related mining phases. The soil material was taken during dry weather periods.…”

“…19 has a special position between the soil samples of the ancient mining areas (No. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and the comparative samples (20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25). In contrast to the ancient shaft hole places and small mine dumps, the base area of the industrial mine dump has no vegetation and nearly no humus formation.…”